Credit: The State Museum of Pennsylvania
In the 1900s, some historians asserted that Pennsylvania's Indian paths followed the trails of buffalo and other wild animals. Although the buffalo seen here occupies a prominent position in The State Museum of Pennsylvania's Mammal Hall, there is little documentary and virtually no archaeological evidence to support the importance of buffalo in Pennsylvania's Native American culture. If buffalo were present in sufficient numbers to be hunted by the Indians, their bones would regularly appear on archaeological sites, either in the form of tools or butchering waste, and references to them would be preserved in oral histories.
